Motifs

In the midst of a big decision, humming birds will appear, outside my window, on the front lawn, in parks, as I am fetching coffee. I should say, a lone humming bird. Always one. It's true, I neurotically look for patterns in life, in nature, in beauty. I catalog experiences, carry around a notebook, take notes, record people's words. Remember and analyze. This is maybe what writers and artists do. We notice in a neurotic way. And maybe patterns don't even exist. Even if there is no such thing as a coincidence, just our unconscious attempting to make some sense of things, impose some order on a set of experiences that transcend order and logic, this is what I notice. Lone humming birds strategically making appearances when I am caught on a threshold of some sort, unable to step back, unable to jump.

"Look," I said to a coffee companion once as a humming bird settled into a space behind us, and took its time traplining a row of Birds of Paradise. It stayed for a while, and we watched it wordlessly. And this was enough, to sit, wordlessly and watch a process without having to explain my neurotic history with hummingbirds, without having to say, "You know this happens a lot..." without being surprised or excited or anything. Just content and wordless for a moment.

These things really shouldn't have to be explained or articulated. It's unfortunate that I have a tendency towards oversharing. Maybe writing is an act of ego, the need to explain the world just as you see it. The need to articulate in a language, exactly your perspective on everything. The need to carve out a language for what you experience. I think my mother is right, though. It's not about leaving behind a legacy, or about people remembering your words. You are trying, against time, against reality even, to preserve the part of you that is timeless. This is ultimately an impossibility. All writers should be called Sisyphus. We are attempting to stem some sort of tide with words. Because what else are we supposed to do with all this time? Why else are we even alive? I think I am more aware of my own mortality than most people my age. I think about death and dying constantly. It's not morbid. It's just thinking.

To sit wordlessly with other people is enough. Words are also a necessary tool in conflict, in provocation. To sit wordlessly is to recognize that different things have different meanings for different people, that we all have our own set of symbols, that we ascribe different and separate meanings to separate things, that we are all in some way starring in each others' movies, sometimes with conflicting scripts and sometimes with harmonious ones. So to sit and watch a singular thing together perhaps means nothing and everything at once. I think this is why I like the experience of watching movies in theaters with other people. It's a dual process of being immersed in a narrative, and knowing that other people in the room are immersed in a similar process but most likely culling out other ideas, making other connections, picking up other nuances.

In the midst of a large-scale project, the kind that exists in my head, the kind that consumes me, the kind that keeps me obsessed, up late at night, thinking, problem solving, trying to make connections from one idea to another, I leave my house and see Tibetan monks in orange robes. Once at the bus stop. Another time, on the main green. This time at Burbank Airport. A single monk in an orange robe, who snaps me out of my thoughts. I always smile, make eye contact. This has been happening for years too. I don't know what it means. But it means enough. Enough for me to notice, document, and feel like even if there are things that exist that are not quite right, maybe something about the whole is just right, just as it is.